José Antonio Valera | Límites (Limits) / 2020

sex games

by Douglas Messerli

 

José Antonio Valera (screenwriter and director) Límites (Limits) / 2020 [10 minutes]

 

Andri (Jaime Macanás) and Jon (Victor Montesinos) have sex out-of-doors. Obviously, it’s their first and perhaps only time together; both have bicycled to the isolated spot, so either or both of them may have other relationships.

     Jon queries Andri about his fantasies of other sexual encounters, a “golden shower” for example. But Andri seems to never have truly thought about such things. But if Jon wants to play a game, he suggests, how about they meet up 10 times, alternating on the location and situation. The first to fail show up and refuse the sex act the other demands loses; what the loser must give up or the winner is awarded, we are not told.

     At the first meeting, Jon shows up in leather, bringing a pair of open-rear pants for Andri to wear. At the second meeting Andri, who happens to be a photographer, films their entire sexual act. For the third meeting, Jon has chosen a drive-in movie where they will have sex among numerous others in the car. Andri readily crawls atop Jon.

     For the fourth meeting, Adri brings along Victor, who, we observe, is busy putting on a lubed-up rubber glove, obviously readying for a fist fuck. Jon awards Andri his piss on their next meeting.

     For their sixth get-together, Jon demands Andri suck his toes, and when Andri seems rather inept at it, shows Andri just how pleasurable it can be. In another meeting, Andri is forced to play a dog on a leash to Jon, again in the wilds. Andri wears a huge teddy-bear head in their next get-together, insisting Jon call him Florentino Mandarino.

     Jon demands that Andri wear a locked leather mouth gag in his final request. Andri has passed his most difficult challenge, he proclaims, and while freeing Andri from the gag, he bends to kiss him.

     But Andri has one final challenge, binding his friend tightly up with ropes. This time, however, we sense a kind of shift, particularly when Andri declares that he’s tried to Jon running away from him each time they meet. For him the sex has been truly personal, and the game was, in fact, a way for Andri to continue to be with Jon. His last request is that Jon become his boyfriend, and if he leaves, he loses.  

     You know I’m cooperative, Jon answers.

     To what, queries Andri.

     Jon insists that Andri untie him.

     But Andri refuses, fearful that Jon will simply run away, while Jon explains that he just wants to hug Andri.

     Andri leans forward and kisses the man who can only be described now as a victim, for the film ends without Andri making any attempt to loose the ropes around his lover.

     One might describe Spanish director Valera’s short film as a descent into kinky desires—desires centered mainly around power and control—which can end only in one or the other becoming the captive. Yet a man bound in rope, as we know, is difficult to make love to, while he has an even more difficult time expressing his love to the other. As Proust has shown us, the captive and the captor can never be truly happy with one another. They are doomed to an imagination of what might happen if they escaped or changed roles.

     There are limits to everything, most particularly regarding sex. And we now come to realize that the loser of the sex games has had to give up his freedom to fully express love.

 

Los Angeles, July 19, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2025).